Well you hit the nail on the head.
I'm sure they have a heavy debt, but wasn't Greece constantly at 80-90% debt to GDP for a long, long, time? Is Quebec even half that?
Check their debt and tax rates. Along with investment - I know they plan some big projects in James bay - Mining to hydro - New rail lines to move the ore.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/782673--quebec-a-poor-little-rich-province
MONTREAL–After Alberta's finance minister, Ted Morton, delivered a deficit budget last month, he vowed to visit university campuses and tell students, "You and your parents are spending a bunch of money to help Quebec, and they're paying half the tuition you are."
Not only do Quebecers pay less tuition, they also pay far less for electricity, drugs and daycare. Quebec offers a more generous parental leave program than elsewhere, and higher corporate subsidies.
It also has higher taxes.
These generous perks are coming into sharp focus here in Quebec for another reason: the province's colossal debt, which some are calling an emergency.
"I don't think there is any place in the world panicking as much on the question of debt as Quebec," said economist Louis Gill.
The reason for this, as Quebec prepares to unveil another deficit budget March 30, is simple: it is Canada's most indebted province.
Worse, using the measurement of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, it's also the fifth-most indebted jurisdiction in the industrialized world, far beyond Canada and the U.S.
Its debt is at 94 per cent of its gross domestic product, just ahead of Japan, Italy and Greece, whose debts exceed their GDP, according to numbers calculated by the provincial finance ministry.
As many call for drastic action, indications are that Premier Jean Charest will go slow, raising the sales tax an extra point in the future, in addition to the one point it will go up on Jan. 1, 2011.
Now, people are making the link between the province's fiscal problems and Alberta's oilsands, which Quebec politicians criticize for their effect on climate change.
After Ontario and Quebec skewered the lucrative oilsands at the Copenhagen climate-change summit in December, Premier Ed Stelmach pointed out Alberta paid $21 billion more than it got back from Ottawa during the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. "That cannot continue," he warned.
He was talking about equalization, the program that ensures public services are at a comparable level across the country. Quebec, a net recipient of federal funds, is its largest beneficiary at $8.5 billion.
While such criticism might be expected from outside Quebec, it's now also coming from within.
André Pratte, one of the province's most influential opinion-makers, wrote recently in La Presse: "If the oil and gas industry is obviously crucial for the Western provinces, it's also very important for the prosperity of the rest of the country, including Quebec."
In another editorial, he wrote, "Thanks (in part) to equalization, Quebec pays for programs that other provinces don't have the means to offer."
Four of Quebec's most renowned economists, tapped by Finance Minister Raymond Bachand for advice on handling debt, agreed in a report last month.
Quebec offers $17 billion, or 26 per cent, more in services than Ontario, while its GDP is 14 per cent less, they observed.
That means even though Quebec is poorer, it spends far more.
"There is a sense of emergency," said task force member Pierre Fortin, a University of Quebec at Montreal economist. "People have become more fearful of public indebtedness than before."
Quebec's gross debt stood at $151 billion last fiscal year, or 49.9 per cent of its GDP. It will rise to 53.5 per cent this year. That compares to 30.1 per cent for Ontario and 4.2 per cent for Alberta.
According to the OECD measure, which includes Quebec's share of the federal debt, it's at $286 billion, even as the province offers services that others do not.
For instance, Quebec has instituted a $7-a-day daycare system. The program has been credited with increasing Quebec's low birth rate and women's participation in the workforce.
Another Quebec benefit: everyone pays less for electricity because of a government decree placed upon Crown-owned Hydro-Québec.
http://www.budget.finances.gouv.qc.ca/Budget/2011-2012/en/documents/BudgetPlan.pdf
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/23/double-talk-hiding-ontarios-debt-troubles
Despite his hard-won reputation for unreliability, I pay attention when Dalton McGuinty talks, about Ontario's debt or anything else. I know I can count on him ... to be misleading in important ways.
Like on Tuesday, when he said the federal government finally got serious about the deficit in the early 1990s with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 67%, whereas: "We're acting when it's about 35%." He even gave the wrong date. It was 1995 before Chretien and Martin panicked and struck.
More importantly, his contrast of 67% with 35% omits the key detail that the feds are in hock for another 41%, giving a worrying combined total of 76%. And, duh, there's only one Ontario taxpayer even if three layers of government go about chortling that he can easily carry their tub of red ink on his head without spilling it.
Before we go any further, a warning: debt is a very complex topic. There are legitimate accounting debates about adding things like, say, the $19.7-billion unfunded liability the C.D. Howe Institute just fingered at Ontario's Workplace Safety Insurance Board, and subtracting assets like the feds' CPP holdings.
In the past week I've seen figures for La Belle Dette ranging from the Conseil du patronat du Quebec's $248.6 billion (quoted by Eric Duhaime) to the 2012 government budget figures of $184 billion gross debt (55% of provincial GDP) and $118 billion for "debt representing accumulated deficits" (35% of GDP) to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business's $166 billion for net debt. (The CFIB also cites a $648 billion federal debt on a "public accounts" basis; the federal budget only admits to $585 billion; the IMF alone offers three quite different numbers.)
Likewise the last Ontario budget put gross debt at $236.3 billion last March and net debt at $217.3 billion while the CFIB says net debt is now $252 billion. But as long as you try to use the same measure over time, you get a picture that's pretty clear and a lot scarier than McGuinty would have you believe.
In its Tuesday budget the Charest administration pointedly said its $3.3-billion 2011 deficit only added 1% to the debt-to-GDP ratio, while Ontario's $16 billion added 2.5%. That only really means while Charest's hole is deeper McGuinty is digging faster. Both are in over their heads.
